


History Lessons

by galacticproportions



Series: Veterans' Affairs [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, M/M, More feelings and character stuff than actual sex, Old married sex, Politics, Still some sex though, Unsatisfactory Plot, Veterans' affairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 06:25:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn represents ex-stormtroopers in the Parliament of the League of Worlds, which comes with its own risks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Klyaksa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klyaksa/gifts).



> Klyaksa asked for a glimpse of Finn's political career, and here it is, with gratitude for their thoughtful insights and conversations about these characters, their motivations, their growth and their possibilities. 
> 
> This comes between "Scenes from a Long Winter" and "Length of Days." 
> 
> Just in case anyone was wondering, I like Notta a lot and think she's great and I now kind of want to write more stuff with her in it, so...that might happen.

_Article 3. Parliamentary Representatives for the League of Worlds shall have the responsibility of their system (Local House) or sector (Sector House). For "responsibility", see Article 2. Additionally, per amendments, for populations that are distributed throughout the galaxy and/or have particular vulnerabilities that may not be addressed by local or sector government, a special representative may appeal for a seat or be appointed by a 2/3 or greater vote across the two Houses._

  _Amendment A) Refugees of worlds destroyed by the Starkiller Weapon or by the ecocidal weapons used in the Battle of Denon and the Battle of Kooriva._

  1. _a) And their first- and second-generation descendants._



_Amendment B) Ex-stormtroopers._

_Amendment C) Formerly enslaved peoples._

_Amendment D) Those without full mature mental capacity for their species, including:_

  1. _a) Children_
  2. _b) The mentally arrested_
  3. _c) The mentally ill_
  4. _d) The senile_



_NOTE: The above categories shall be assigned according to the standard of each species._

_Amendment E) Beings or elements judged to be nonsentient but essential, including:_

  1. _a) Bodies of water and waterways_
  2. _b) Soil/planetary surface_
  3. _c) Nonsentient animals and insects_
  4. _d) Vegetation_



_NOTE: Ed) excludes sentient photosynthetic or fungal species, who shall be represented per system and sector according to the main body of Article 3._

 The Parliament convenes in a different system each time to minimize what one of the historians Poe's addicted to calls the "creeping centralization" and "cosmopolitan provincialism" that made the New Republic cocky and vulnerable, though the rotation by which it moves from system to system causes problems of its own. Finn has never been to Sevvay 5 before, and probably he'll never be here again, but the air is crisp if a little thin and the canal boat they took from the spaceport to the center city was kind of nice.

 Poe is with him, which is unusual and unexpected and unsurprisingly pleasant, except that it reminds him that he's nervous. He doesn't anticipate a difficult session, but two of his own initiatives--things that enough ex-troopers want that he feels bound to try to keep getting them--are up for reconsideration, and he has to make a speech about them. Not a dramatic speech. They're not dramatic things. He just has to ask for them in a clear, coherent way, and register and respond to any opposition, and hope there won't be so much opposition that he has to do the same thing again the following day.

 Then he has to meet with a couple of committees he's on, and _then_ he can go back to where they're staying for a rest and a quickie and maybe a swim before the stupid party. There's always a party. The rest of a planet could be struggling to contain an epidemic or fighting off an invasion force, and the people who've decided _they're_ the important ones would still put on their fanciest clothes, go into a room with doors that lock on the inside, and eat things on sticks. "You're sure about coming to the session," he says to Poe, straightening his sash of office.

 "'Course I'm sure."

 "Nine out of ten things anyone says will be boring."

 "History in the making," Poe intones from the bed. "Plus I get to look at you, which is never boring."

 Finn faces the mirror and takes a breath and says, "My constituents have requested the cooperation and assistance of all systems represented here--" He stops because Poe has gotten up and is standing behind him, arms around his waist, chin on his shoulder, cheek to his cheek. "Go on," Poe says. "Let's hear the rest of it."

 "My constituents have requested the cooperation and assistance of all systems--cut that out." Poe is biting his ear and stroking his chest. "The cooperation and assistance of all systems--the more I say that the more it sounds awful. Assistance and cooperation of all systems for ex-stormtroopers seeking their _mmmh,_ I said stop, I'm trying to practice here."

 The minute he hears "stop" Poe is halfway across the room, but he still looks smug. "Later," Finn says. "Okay?"

 "Promise?"

 "Hell yes, I promise. My constituents have requested..."

 

*

 

Poe has apparently sweet-talked his way into a gallery spot just opposite Finn's seat. Since Finn forgot to say anything about where his seat was, this means Poe took the trouble to find out, which is classic and also touching.

 There's the ceremonial oath of good faith and the moment of silence for the destroyed planets, and then the randomizer pops out the first item on the agenda--everyone who signed up to speak knows they'll get a chance, but not when. There are no votes scheduled for today, but Finn takes notes on his datapad for things that might come up later: suspicions of sentient trafficking in the Antemeridian sector, the impending crisis of a rapidly shrinking albedo on a newly colonized moon. He's there to represent ex-troopers, to do what they've told him they want and what he thinks will be best for them, but he can vote on whatever he wants, or abstain; it's still a heady feeling.

 The randomizer spits out his name and title and request, and he picks up the little egg-shaped microphone. He doesn't look, but he knows his face is being projected hugely on a holoscreen at one end of the room. Across the way, Poe's watching him with a kind of delighted anticipation that frankly seems out of proportion to what he's actually going to say. He says, "My constituents have requested the assistance," and stops when something whizzes past him, thudding into the tier behind him.

 It's a bolt from a bowcaster. Finn touches it stupidly, then spins at the sound of motion from the gallery, a brief shift of vision and Poe's seat empty. Another seat, behind it, vacant too. The Parliamentary floor is buzzing like a swarm of Eriolon locusts, security officers are moving, other people are standing, his neighbor from Sullust looks dazed insofar as it's possible to tell. The microphone is still in his hand. " I came here to make a request on behalf of my constituents," he says--the room is quieting--"and I still haven't made it. My constituents have requested the assistance and cooperation of all systems for ex-stormtroopers seeking their worlds of origin. They've also requested that when an ex-stormtrooper is convicted of a crime by the law of their world, that they have mandated access to a mindhealer in addition to any other mandates. Objections to these requests?"

 There are no objections. The pale green "granted" signals light up all over the projection of the seating chart, with gray abstentions from worlds that don't have mindhealing, or criminal law. Then that fades, and it's replaced with the red-brown antennae and feelers of the next representative who gets up to speak. Finn sits, draws on the Force to shield the rest of the room from the adrenaline souring in his body, tries to listen and take notes. Tries not to think about what will happen if Poe catches up with the person who shot at him, since he can't do anything about that right now.

 When the session ends he asks his Sullustan neighbor and the sector rep for Venzeiia, who sits in front of him, to walk with him to the exit; he asks the people he's supposed to be meeting with later if they can postpone, and proposes a time tomorrow; he shows the droid on the door the little holo of Poe that he carries around with him, and asks them to tell that person and that person _only_ that he's returning to their lodgings; he ignores the holonews reporters that cluster around the exit like flies on a wound.

 A few of them trail him as far as the bridge, but don't cross the water. Senses he hasn't been using regularly are awake again, prickling and sweeping, assessing peripheral motions and shadows, and he knows that Poe's catching up with him even before he hears his name called.

 He turns, and Poe breaks from a stride into a full run. The impact when they meet shakes Finn's breath loose in his chest, kicks him back into another time when they ran toward each other like this, purely caught in each other's gravity. He holds Poe tight and smells the fear-sweat on him. "We've gotten soft," Finn says, thinking maybe he can ease things. "Imagine if every time someone took a shot at one of us during the war, we--"

 "Shut up," Poe says, grabs his face, kisses him hard. "Fuck, that's infuriating, now I understand why you hate it when I do it. Don't you try to play this off."

 "Poe, I'm fine. I'm okay. It didn't touch me."

 "I know that. I saw it hit the wall behind you. You think I would've gone after them if I didn't know you were okay? Can we get inside? I don't like standing out here."

 They're close at this point to where they're staying. Finn sends his awareness into their room before opening the door, and even though he senses no one, Poe goes in first. No one, nothing, just the faded-but-clean blankets and their formal outfits in the clothespress and their dim reflections in the mirror. Poe locks the door, and Finn sits down on the bed and lets out a shaky sigh, presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. "You find out anything about the shooter?"

 "Couldn't catch 'em," Poe says. "Too slow," meaning himself, and Finn can tell he hates saying it. Poe's cheeks look hollow, the lines on his face deeper. "Didn't even really get a look. They were sitting behind me, I don't know if you saw that, and when they were running I just saw their back. Bipedal and human-sized is about as good as I can do."

 "We forgot," Finn says, staring at the pattern on the floor. "We forgot that we can't keep each other safe, not really, we used to know that but we forgot--"

 The bed sinks a little as Poe sits beside him, gathers him in, presses lips to his temple.

 After a while Poe says, "I think it'd be good for you to eat something. Can I leave and get us some food?"

 "Yeah. That'd probably--yeah."

 "You'll be okay here for a second? I'll lock the door behind me."

 "I'll be okay," Finn says. It's just shock, delayed shock, he's been in shock before. Poe's right, food will help and so will--a light warmth settles on his shoulders, and Poe, minus jacket, drops a kiss at his hairline before leaving the room. He knows it would probably better to stand up, move, open a window maybe, but he sits in the same place until Poe gets back.

 They eat some kind of seasoned fish wrapped in some kind of plant, probably good if his tastebuds were working, and fruit that tastes like sweet glue. They drink water, and say very little for a while. Poe says finally, "They're not still having the party tonight, are they?"

"No. Postponed till tomorrow while they get extra security in."

 "Shit. I was hoping we'd missed it." Finn knows he's supposed to laugh, but he can't quite manage it. "This isn't the best time to ask this," Poe goes on, "and they'll probably ask you about it tomorrow, but do you have any idea--"

 "No. I did think about it. I mean, there are people who hate ex-troopers, but they usually just beat up the first one they find. Or refuse to give them a job. Or keep them waiting at a clinic, you know how it goes. I guess they might want me out of action, but now that the seat exists they'd just appoint someone else. There could be someone who hates me specifically, but why wouldn't they just come to where we live? Way less--" Finn yawns cavernously--"less public."

 "Let's go to sleep," Poe suggests. "I'll take a rain check on that promise, unless you really want to."

 In bed with Poe's chest pressed against his back and Poe's arm tucked under his and their fingers entwined near his throat, Finn feels almost safe. He expects nightmares, but wakes only once, feels Poe breathing against him, goes to sleep again.

 In the morning, when they turn to lock the door behind them and head out, they see the thickly painted letters: TRAITOR.

 

*

 

The stormtrooper and the pilot. During the war itself, they were never as notorious as the other pilots joked about; nobody had time for that, not when casualties were piling up by the planetful and the two strongest Force users in a generation or more were facing off astride the sky.

 But since the war, if anyone knows who Poe is, they know who Finn is, and vice versa; anyone who knows about them knows that they're together, and knows at least a little bit about how they got that way. There are a few songs about them (actually more than a few, but the ones Poe writes for Finn and sings to him aren't for anyone else to hear) and at least one pornographic holovid, which they bought to laugh at but ended by trying to one-up.

 What that taught Poe, besides that he's still capable of four orgasms in two hours, was that history is made in more ways than you might think. His work takes him here and there, and these past couple of years he's started reading and listening to and watching the recorded materials of the worlds he visits: what they say about themselves, what others say about them. He's read military histories, nuns' diaries, dictators' official accounts, translations of histories written in pheremones on tree bark or recorded underwater; he's watched children's holoprogramming and listened to daylong oral epics. Knowing what's happened so far helps him understand what the people he works with want to happen next.

 In his work, Poe is more or less invisible to history. When a movement leader asks for his help, or when he hears a rumor of an attempt at liberation and goes to see what can be done, he barely even speaks; he listens, asks questions, smiles or looks grave. They know the situation on the ground, and they know the context. All the actions are theirs, whether they succeed or fail. If there's a public eye, they're the ones who draw it, and if there's a record, true or false, they're the ones who end up in it.

 Finn, though. Finn is about as public as a person can be in a galaxy spanning light-years and cultures uncountable. His beautiful, expressive face is the face of freedom, the face of the beginning of the end of the war. Anytime an ex-trooper does something that catches widespread attention, there's at least a tiny picture of that face in the corner of people's holoscreens, even if Finn is light-years away and has nothing to do with it. And periodically, he stands up in front of people from all the inhabited systems and becomes a target.

 They trust each other to do what they do, to calculate the risks, to make the right decisions. It's an understanding they forged during the war and had to relearn in peacetime; it's fragile and jerry-rigged and needs periodic adjustment, but it's real and it's theirs. Poe doesn't know why this feels different. He only knows that if he'd been able to catch the would-be assassin, he would've killed them. And he knows that because he _didn't_ catch them, they or whoever they're associated with will probably try again.

 The perimeter of the meeting hall bristles with guards, but the second day of the session and Finn's committee meetings pass without incident. The party is alternately subdued and ghoulish, and the things on sticks are stale.

 The management has painted over the door by the time they get back. Poe rubs Finn's back and legs, slow and deep, murmuring nonsense about how lovely he is and how strong, how perfectly thick his thighs and belly are, how his ass is the kind of ass sentients everywhere have dreamed of for centuries. Finn doesn't always put up with this kind of thing, but tonight he relaxes into it, laughing into the pillow at Poe's extravagance and pressing up into his touch.

 Predictably, this proceeds to Poe rubbing his cock along Finn's asscrack and bending to kiss his shoulders, which in turn proceeds to Finn flipping the two of them over and riding him until the sounds they're both making must be audible from the street. Poe thinks, while he can still think at all, _If anyone's out there waiting for us, wanting to hurt us, wanting to stop us, I hope they can hear this._

 

*

 

 _I'm sending Notta to you,_ reads the comm from Rey. _She wants to see you anyway, and she can teach you how to deflect projectiles and a few other useful things. And she can help you hold the fort while Poe's gone._ Being Rey, she doesn't say _be careful_ or _watch your back;_ she knows he will if he can.

 "How does she know I'm going?" Poe demands. "Jedi can't really see the future, can they?"

 "I don't think so. More like probability. They have more information to work with than the rest of us. But also, she just knows you. What else would you do?"

 Poe is headed into the old First Order-controlled territories to see if he can trace the attack to its source. BB-8 is thrilled--they don't get to go on every mission these days--and divides their time between calculating routes, bumptiously superintending the packing and knocking against Finn's legs to reassure him that they'll miss him too.

 Notta steps off the transport and Finn is surprised at how comforting it is to see her, plump and calm and confident, changed from the bony, wary near-child he first met. Little more than a cadet when the war ended, Notta lived in one of the first ex-trooper towns, where Finn was in charge for the first year, until Rey came and invited her and other Force-sensitive ex-troopers to the Jedi Temple.

 "How long can you stay?" Finn asks as she glances around their kitchen and sets to making herself a cup of tea.

 "I brought three cycles' worth of hormones, so about that long."

 "You can get them here too," Poe calls from the next room. "This isn't a total backwater."

 "Good to see you too, Poe," Notta calls back. She grins at Finn, her dimples and tooth gap showing. "So longer, I guess, if you need me. But three standard months should be plenty of time to teach you some things, unless you're slower than you used to be."

 After Poe leaves Finn will set her up with a cot, since he and Notta still both sleep better with someone else in the room. But this night, after they eat together and split a few bottles of wine, she takes the couch with a knowing leer.

 Finn is superstitious about not doing anything extra before they have to be apart. Nothing dramatic, nothing that could possibly feel like a last time. They undress without ceremony, but when Poe gets down to his drawers, Finn says, "Don't put those in the wash."

 "No?" Arched eyebrow. "Where do you want me to put them?"

 "Someplace. I don't know. I mean, you can take them off now. I just want ..."

 "You wanna have them for when I'm away?" Poe's grinning. "By all means. You've never done that before. That I know of."

 "Never thought of it before."

 "Why don't you take them off me," Poe says, stretching out, "and put them where you can find them again, and then come back over here."

 Finn complies, and comes back to lay his cheek on Poe's belly while Poe unhurriedly strokes himself hard, then guides Finn's head down when he's ready. Finn takes him all the way in for just a second, then pulls off to smell and taste, sinks his nose and mouth into the musk of Poe's bush, mouths at his balls, licks along the underside of his cock, kisses just below his hipbone. Everything he does he repeats, memorizing, checking.

 Poe's hips twitch impatiently and his cockhead bumps against Finn's brow, and they both laugh. It breaks the reverence a little, which is okay, and Finn settles his mouth over Poe's dick and sets to work earnestly to make him come, which he does, with a long sigh.

 Finn keeps his mouth where it is, moving his tongue softly, until Poe shifts restlessly and says, "Hey, come up here. What about you?"

 Finn presses against him, kisses him. "Just your hand is good."

 "If you say so," Poe says, kissing back, stroking down. It feels so good, Finn thinks, to be known this way. Poe holds his face with the other hand, meets his eyes earnestly: "You really don't want anything else?"

 Finn looks back at him: heavy lids and crescent lashes, lips a little chapped from kissing, stubble that will grow in gray if he lets it. Smile lines and stress lines and the finer network around his eyes. He says, "I really don't."

 

*

 

Too many of the worlds in the sectors the First Order once controlled are graveyards in waiting, ecological ruins, fragmented populations without the resources to stay _or_ leave. People on these worlds might be angry enough to go after Finn, blaming him somehow, but it doesn't seem to Poe that they'd be organized enough. He saves them for last on the route that he and BB-8 make together, and heads for Psanai, the only one of their "model" worlds that survived the war relatively unscathed.

 The spaceport must have been gleaming once, with the looming structures that tend to impress totalitarians. He gives the port and customs officials his cover story, but they don't seem to care much, just sweep over his documents with a hand scanner and wave him through. He's here as himself, though part of him wanted to go with an alias just to see if anyone would call him on it. He doesn't look much like the recruitment posters anymore.

 Four days in, he starts to wonder if he's losing his touch. He wouldn't expect anyone to spill their guts to a stranger about a possible First Order resurgence, but he can barely get anyone to talk to him about their work, or the tram delays, or even the weather--it rains drenchingly the third day, and even being trapped with two other people under the dripping awning of a caf-stand isn't enough to start a conversation, or draw out an expression other than resignation.

 In this city of sapless people, Poe misses Finn more than usual. The way he _responds_ to the world, justly and openly, and how his response shows on his face: the way his nose wrinkles when something confounds or disgusts him, his snort of frustration, the purposeful set of his jaw, the shape his mouth takes when something delights him just _before_ he smiles about it. Poe's smiling, himself, just thinking about it, and the Psanaiki are eyeing him with something between suspicion and alarm. He turns up the intensity, adding a little edge to it, and one of them blushes. He doesn't like what this place is doing to him.

 He doesn't like the next six worlds any better. Poe knows as well as anyone, probably, how the First Order treated its prisoners, and almost as well as anyone how it treated its soldiers. But this is his first real confrontation with its effect on its adherents. The people he encounters in these systems farm, build, repair; they have systems in place to help them do these things. They eat and keep themselves clean. They treat the sick and dispose of the dead. They even, presumably, have sex: he eventually sees children on some worlds, though not as many as he'd have expected by this time, and people were attempting to pick each other up in the bar where he spent one fruitless evening. But they do all these things dutifully at best and grimly at worst, as though they once had a reason for doing them and now that reason is absent, or they've forgotten it.

 If Finn had stayed a stormtrooper and survived the war, is this who he would have become? But most of these people aren't ex-troopers; they're people who lived under the First Order, either enthusiastically or under duress--no way now of telling which.

 And they hate him.

 He could've predicted it; should have. But since the attack on Finn, it's been hard for him to think in the wide-ranging, associative way that used to be second nature when he was gathering intelligence. On the second world he visited, someone his own age spat on him in the street. On the third world, no one would rent him a room. By the fourth world, he was using an alternate identity and booby-trapping his door at night.

 He's been in ground firefights, he's met people's eyes before firing the shot that killed them. But the survivors of his actions have never looked him in the face and told him what they think of him. What he did to them. If someone had asked him what he thought would happen, after, he would have guessed something like this, but guessing is different than seeing, and anyway during wartime that's exactly the kind of question no one asks. Except Finn, maybe.

Strangely, as far as he can tell once he's no longer traveling as himself, they don't seem to hate Finn. Maybe the way he fought seems different to them. Maybe their loyalty wasn't to the First Order but just to each other; Finn's defection wouldn't mean anything to them then. He doesn't think these are the people he's looking for, and he's tired, and worried about Finn, and he wants to go home. BB-8 clucks scoldingly at him and plots their course.

 Unshaven and exhausted, trying to trim time off the run partly to get home sooner and partly to occupy his mind, he remembers something General Organa said to him when he started spying for her: "If you can't get _any_ answer to the question you're asking, you're probably on the right track. But if you can't get the answer you want, you need to consider the possibility that you're asking the wrong question."

 

*

 

The days take on the pattern that they often do when Finn's at home and Poe's away. He does his job: comms with veterans' affairs offices in various systems, delegates work to his planetside staff, reads reports from ex-trooper towns, checks in with various officials to see how they're implementing his constituents' requests. There's an ex-trooper town on this continent, one of the reasons they chose this planet, and people still come by for the three-on-one meetings that allow them to be optimally themselves while still letting him know what's going on.

 Sometimes they bring their kids, which fills Finn with a feeling it's hard to describe. _Human_ seems close when he watches a bright-eyed, halo-haired girl drawing monsters and airfish and people in pretty dresses while her parents talk to him about the return of the panic attacks they thought were gone for good, or the work they're doing with herd animals that makes them feel grounded and useful; even when they're talking about the trouble the other kids at their daughter's creche have been giving her.

 In the afternoons he trains with Notta, who delights in imitating Rey's accent when she tells him how to direct his attention or his energies, but who turns out to be a good teacher. "You know how to shield, right?" she said to him the first day. "Deflecting starts with that, only instead of just doing it around your mind, you do it around your body. Keep the Force moving, but in a circle instead of flowing through, you know?" Then she lobbed plates at him until he got the knack of it, figured out what to hold and what to let go.

 Over meals they talk mainly about the Temple, the students, Rey. Notta wants to know everything about how they met, what Rey was like when she was young, how well she flew--"I've never seen her fly, she never goes up anymore"--and how brave she was.

 "You love her," Finn says, seeing it suddenly.

 "Of course," says Notta, rolling her eyes. "For all the good that does! How does she manage it, anyway? I've never seen her like that with anyone."

 "I don't know," Finn says. "I've never known. I figured she'd tell me if it was my business, and she never told me."

 A shrug. "Plenty of other serpents in the sea, anyway."

 "I thought Jedi were supposed to practice non-attachment?"

 "Oh," Notta drawls, grinning, "I don't get _attached_ to them."

 That's the first night Finn retrieves Poe's drawers from the clothes shelf where he put them, presses them to his face with one hand while he touches himself with the other, breathes in the muggy and salty smells of sweat and hair, comes and cries.

 An ex-trooper leaps from a bridge halfway across the galaxy, and reporters bother him for a statement that he refuses to give, but he sends someone from his staff to the system to investigate. The year cools toward winter, and when they practice in the courtyard, the wind rattles the brown grasses and dries Finn's sweat. Notta teaches him to make it seem like he isn't there. "This won't work on a Force user," she cautions. "Do they have one?"

 "I don't know," Finn says. "I don't even know who they are."

 He never really stops thinking about it, but it doesn't get him anywhere. It's easy to think of the painted TRAITOR on the door and assume it means what it once meant: that he betrayed the Order. But could it mean instead that he's betrayed his people--the ex-troopers, the survivors--by making the decisions he's made, through he ways he uses his power? He doesn't think that's true, but then he wouldn't.

 "We weren't ever supposed to have to _do_ anything like this," he says to Notta after a ragged, painful day, full of miscommunications and the putting out of small, unnecessary fires. "None of us were. We were supposed to be someone else's nightmare, but for ourselves, we were supposed to feel, like, three things, and then kill people, and then die." They're sitting on the couch, the dishes are dry, the wind is lowing outside. Notta reaches out her bare foot to touch his. "I know," she says. "I dream about it, do you? Not the bad parts. The neutral parts. The parts that felt like, this is just the way things are."

 "I did at the beginning. Most of my dreams are war dreams now, or just regular dreams where the Parliament convenes and I don't have any pants on." He's been dreaming of Poe, though, these past few nights. Not erotic dreams. He just runs into Poe somewhere, and they're glad to see each other. He says, "I wish I could know every single one of us. I feel like then I could be sure I was doing what everyone needed, even though that's impossible, there are so many, and it's not like we all need the same things anyway--" He stops. "That's it, right? That's the thing. That's what we weren't prepared for."

 "Yeah," Notta says. "The Temple is great for that, 'cause there's a routine. The meditation helps, and all of that, but what really helps is how _old_ it is, how far back it goes. You feel all the years and centuries of people doing these same things and it kind of presses you down, but in a good way, you know, without the reconditioning and the nasty rations and the disposability."

 She pauses, rolling the end of one of her tiny braids between her fingers. "Also, you know, at the Temple, no one really gives me shit for being an ex-trooper. No one acts like I don't belong there, no one blames me for shit that's not my fault, and if I get beat up it's 'cause I really did ask for it. I know you're trying to make it like that out here for other people, but--" She squeezes his foot with her toes, trying to send comfort.

 Notta comes along to the two sessions of Parliament that convene while she's with him and helps him scan the room for hostility. Nothing untoward happens; he sits, listens, grants or withholds his support for various measures, meets with the people he needs to meet with, comes back home. A few days after that, he takes her to the port and goes back to the apartment alone to read a pile of labor discrimination reports.

 He feels tired and hollow. He can get ex-troopers access to services, and he can make it costly for other people to make their lives difficult, but he can't get inside people's heads and remove the distrust and blame and desire to hurt. Sometimes he wishes he could, even though he knows that's the kind of thing that Snoke and the Order would do, the kind of thing that they tried to do to him and so many other people. And it didn't even work, so it probably wouldn't work the other way. Finn puts his elbows on the reports and his head in his hands.

 Poe returns on a snowy night. Finn sees the wet bootprints on the floor first, feels his heart stutter and his hand grope for a blaster he isn't carrying. Then he puts it together and goes to find Poe in the kitchen, drinking water. He smells stale, like stress-sweat and recycled air and sleeplessness.

 They have a water shower, with a Yavin-style solar rooftank, one of their few indulgences. Kes brought the parts over himself and superintended the installation, too old (he said) to be scampering around on the roof but not too old to gleefully shout instructions out the window. Finn undresses Poe and leads him into the shower chamber and washes him gently, every angle, every crevice, works soap and lotion through his hair. Dries him, kisses him, leads him into their room, bends him in half and fucks him till he convulses and collapses.

 All of this is nearly wordless, intent and efficient, and after he comes sleep takes Finn like a black curtain dropping. When he wakes, Poe is up on an elbow, looking at him. "Hey, sweetheart," he says.

 "Hey," Finn says foolishly. "Sweetheart to you too." He rolls and buries his face in Poe's neck.

 

*

 

Poe finds it surprisingly hard to talk about the visit to former First Order space, partly because he's not bringing back anything useful--he hates to fail--and partly because it sounds like he thinks he's the injured one. "I don't resent it," he says finally. "And it wouldn't matter if I did, I know that's not the point. It's just--you think you've faced everything. Made your peace with what you've done. When if I'd thought about it for even one second--"

 They're cleaning the breakfast dishes, because sometimes it's easier to talk when you're not looking at the other person. Finn says, "You can be angry at yourself for it, but don't be angry at yourself for not thinking about it before."

 "I'm not angry at myself for doing it. I'm just thinking about it, that's all."

 "You said they hated you."

 " _They_ said they hated me. I'm just reporting."

 "Yeah, I wasn't doubting that. I was thinking back to the first idea I had, when it happened. Maybe whoever shot me was thinking the same way. Not someone who believes in the First Order, someone who hates it. Looks at me and sees the enemy."

 "But everybody knows you defected," Poe points out. "That's the thing people know about you, if they don't know anything else."

 "Yeah, but then what did I do? I started asking for things for people who didn't defect, didn't prove anything. Enemy combatants. _Stormtroopers."_ Finn's voice has an edge that's rare for him; it makes Poe's throat ache. "It makes sense," Finn says. "I hate that it makes sense."

 There are no more dishes, nothing else to clean; they sit at the kitchen table. "You think the writing on the door was misdirection."

 "Sure. Maybe. But then I had another idea, while you were gone, that it might _be_ ex-troopers, like maybe I wasn't doing enough for them, or what they wanted. I haven't been following it up too much, Poe, to be honest, I've just been trying to do what I'm supposed to do. I think about it but I don't get anywhere. If the Order's trying to regroup, it matters, of course it does, but I can't seem to ..."

 Poe reaches out and covers one of Finn's hands with both of his, lifts it to his lips, kisses the knuckles, the palm, holds it to his cheek--lightly, so Finn can pull back if he wants. He doesn't seem to want to; after a still moment, he moves his hand himself to trace Poe's bottom lip with a fingertip, as if to say _Yes, distract me._

 Poe sucks on his fingers, tongue flicking against the pads, letting spit pool in his mouth. He's going for "attentive" rather than "demanding," so he keeps quiet, lets Finn be the one to guide him down with pressure on his jaw. He levers awkwardly out of his chair and onto his knees between Finn's thighs.

 He revels in the salt and stretch, mouth filled, ears alert, responding to Finn's quiet grunts and hisses of breath by speeding or slowing his pace, tightening his lips, relaxing his throat. After a few minutes he feels a hand under his chin, lifting him: "Your mouth feels so good," Finn says, almost apologetically, "but this chair and my back--"

 "Got it," Poe says, "couch might be better, c'mon," and it's his turn to take Finn's hand and lead him. "You want a little more like that?" he asks.

 "Please--and your fingers--"

 Together, hands colliding, they tug Finn's pants and drawers down, and Poe sinks to the floor again, licks experimentally around the tip of Finn's half-hard cock, doesn't like the angle, readjusts. He glories in feeling Finn get stiffer, fuller, inside his mouth. Pulls off to wet his fingers and kiss Finn's thighs, grateful that he can still do this for Finn, at least.

 He sucks long and thoroughly, greedily even, while Finn grinds down on his fingers, hot and clenching, and just as he's thinking he can keep this up forever Finn drives his hips upward, gasps, "Poe," and comes down Poe's throat. He rides it out, swallows, lets a stream of it slip out of the corner of his mouth as he eases his fingers out and lays his head on Finn's thigh.

 Finn strokes and tangles Poe's hair and they lie there for a while, Poe turning his head to plant another kiss when he takes the notion and feeling a lazy thrill, nothing he needs to act on at the moment, when the movement pulls against Finn's grip. Far above him Finn says, "I should probably get up."

 "Mmm," Poe says, staying where he is. Finn bounces his thigh. "Move."

 "I like this spot," Poe says. "This is a good spot."

 "You can come back to it later."

 "I better mark it then." Poe turns his head again, sucks and bites. Finn swears, then laughs. "It probably won't show," he says. "I hope it does, though."

 "You'll feel it," Poe says. "You can tell me where to come back to." He sits up to let Finn move, in time to see him wince. "Sorry," he says. "I should've thought about your back earlier."

 "No, why? That's why I said something. It's not on you to think of everything." Finn reaches out and pulls him in for a kiss, open-mouthed and sweet. He's definitely much more relaxed, and Poe feels proud. "I'm glad you're here."

 "Me too. I think it was stupid to go, actually. Maybe we really did get soft--we've been doing this bassackwards. It's not personal, it's not just about you, about us, we can't treat it like it is. I'll call on the people from the networks who are still alive--"

 Finn bends to pull his pants back up. "I know we need to talk about this, but can we in, like, four hours? I have two three-on-one meetings, and one of the people in one of them has been hitting her girlfriend, and then I have to draft this comm to the Sultan of Axany--did you know anyplace still had sultans? A lot of ex-troopers have been moving there recently because they're doing a lot of--you know what, you don't wanna hear this. I liked it better when all I had to think about was your fingers in my ass."

 "You mean seven minutes ago."

 "Yeah, seven minutes ago."

 "And four hours and seven minutes from now. If you want."

 Finn's standing now, towering a little. Poe's head is at crotch height and he'd like nothing better than to start all over again immediately, as if they had no obligations and were part of nothing but each other, living in the continuous present of each other's pleasure. Finn gets a grip on Poe's curls again, pulls his head briefly close. "We'll see."

 "I do want to hear about it," Poe says. "Whatever you feel like telling me."

 

*

 

The pilot and the stormtrooper. Finn has never told Poe, and never will tell him, that some of Finn's constituents distrust him--vocally, persistently--because of who he's been and even more because of who he's with. Not all of them see the Resistance as liberators or benefactors. They understand what was wrong with their lives in the First Order; they don't want those lives back. But it's tough for them to be grateful to the people who shot and burned and blew up hundreds of them, thousands. He wouldn't expect it.

 Knowing he was a stormtrooper before he was Resistance makes some of them accept him, but even Sixty, who he left in charge of the first ex-trooper program he worked with, and whose level head he had reason to appreciate, had taken him aside right before he left and said, "Look, Dameron's a liability for you. People are talking about it. They know his war record and they're wondering how serious you can be about advocating for them if you're fucking a guy who wiped troopers out like dust in a corridor."

 He didn't argue then, didn't remind Sixty of the stormtroopers Finn himself had shot, or his role in blowing up Starkiller, or the Battle of Denon, or the invasion of Manaan where stormtroopers opened fire on a civilian crowd. Conversations that start by comparing body counts usually run downhill from there. He'd said something like, "We'll have to work around it."

 It's not a question of liabilities or assets, weakness or strength. He and Poe have chosen each other again and again. They are the facts of each other's lives, but not the only facts. Poe is the man who shot the first person Finn ever loved, the man who rained down fire and death from the sky. The man who now enables small-r resistance and resilience across the galaxy. The turner of tides, the shaper of history.

 The man who lifts his head when Finn returns from a meeting with his staff and sings soulfully, "Finn is back / the love of my life / his eyes are like stars / and his dick tastes so good / unlike his cooking / so I'm going to make dinner tonight / because I know he's been living on instant meals / the entire time I've been away." He looks at Finn expectantly. And it works, it does, Finn's smiling before he knows it: it lifts something in him, makes it lighter. Poe goes back to fingerpicking quietly and says, "I put out some feelers to what's left of the networks while you were working."

 "Is anyone still around?" Finn settles into a chair opposite; there's no room on the couch for Poe and the guitar and him too.

 "Some of them. The Calrissian girls are, all except Ugomi, and they still have a very profitable sideline in information. Couple of my Core Worlds contacts made it through--there's a wife-and-wife team I'd trust to handle something like this. And Hajaks, a First Order double, he managed to get asylum, but I don't know if he'd want to get back in."

 "I didn't know Ugomi died."

 "A little while ago. Some virus she picked up and boom, dead in a week." He keeps playing, his fingers on the strings restless and delicate.

 "I don't think it's that we've gotten soft," Finn says after listening and watching for a while. "I think we just forgot how to be part of something we can draw on. A command structure, a fighting force. I got stuck thinking about things I could do by myself."

 "I probably would've gone out myself, back then."

 "I know you would. And then when you got back, General Organa would've yelled at you for it and told you you should've gone through channels and asked you what you thought we had the networks for, anyway."

 "That's true," Poe says fondly. "She would've." He frowns theatrically. "Does this mean I've learned something?"

 "I doubt Rey's going to want to get the Jedi involved more than they are," Finn says, ignoring this, "but I should at least ask her. And I can put a team on it through the planetside liaisons to look into the ex-trooper angle. This helps, this is good."

 "Was it good having Notta here?"

 "Yeah. She ... gets it. And she taught me a lot. I'll show you tomorrow. I can block projectiles now. And make myself invisible--well. Okay. Hard to see."

 "I don't like that one as much," Poe says, laying the guitar aside and beckoning. Finn crosses to him and sits close. He says, "I might die anyway."

 "Yeah, I know." Poe buries his face in Finn's hair and inhales. "Fuck, I hate being helpless," and his breath brushes Finn's scalp, a thread so fragile to hold him here, to keep them together. "Do you miss it? The structure, all that?"

 "Sometimes," Finn says, and leaves it at that, because Poe's talking about the Resistance, isn't even thinking about the other thing, and by his standards--not _his,_ he reminds himself, the Order's, but his too--the Resistance was a mess that way. And even though Poe can understand the gut-deep desire for order, for sameness, for discipline--has understood it, when they've talked about it over the years--Finn knows he doesn't feel it. What drives Poe isn't duty, or even loyalty; it's possibility, the way that things _could_ be. He says, "You haven't said I should quit."

 "No," Poe says blankly. "Why would I say that?"

 He really means it. Finn sighs and sinks back against him. "Because I used to say it to you all the time?"

 Poe's quiet then. He winds his hand under Finn's shirt where it's ridden up, pressing his palm there. "We're different that way," he says eventually. "You were trying to take care of me. I didn't mind it. I was glad when you stopped, though." The way they're sitting, Finn can feel Poe's voice along his spine, across the scar. "We've always had to make it up," Poe says. "No precedent. So we change things as we go. Just so long as we keep going." He kisses Finn's jaw just below his ear, and for a long while that's how they stay.


End file.
